Portal:Speculative fiction/Horror
Selected horror profile
Blackburn began his professional film career directing commercials and music videos, and became associated with the film production company Warp X. He served as Second Unit Director on the film Reverb. Blackburn co-wrote and directed Donkey Punch, which was his first film to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival. He shot the film on a £1 million budget over 24 days in South Africa. Movie critics likened his work on the film to filmmaker Peter Berg's Very Bad Things, director Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm, and Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water. He went on to serve as writer for the film Vinyan, which critics compared to two films by director Nicolas Roeg, Don't Look Now and Heart of Darkness. Selected horror workThe Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name. Set in 16th-century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence. The film was the second title in the popular series of Poe-based movies released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman's House of Usher released the previous year. Like House, the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter. A critical and box office hit, Pit's commercial success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price. The series ended in 1965 with the release of The Tomb of Ligeia. Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963) to Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). Stephen King has described one of Pit's major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film. Horror topics
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